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Nearly half of consumers living paycheck to paycheck, couldn’t pay for $1K expense
(www.independent.co.uk)
this post was submitted on 20 Apr 2026
276 points (99.3% liked)
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This is how capitalism functions. You don’t need to enslave people or threaten them with violence. It’s easier and more pleasant for the ruling class to just let them live on the brink. If you’re desperate, you’re easy to manipulate.
Americans voted for it and voted against all measures that would help this time and time again.
A minority of Americans*
Abstaining from voting also makes them culpable...
As I've commented on here before, I think that personal finance should be part of K-12 core curriculum.
The entire extent of what my K-12 education covered was how to write a check and how to balance a checkbook in 5th grade. And, in an optional driver's ed class, we had to get sample insurance quotes from multiple insurers to drive home the fact that you should get multiple quotes. That's all I got in 13 years of formal education.
My home economics class in maybe...7th grade?...didn't touch personal finance at all. Basic cooking skills, clothing repair, some arts and crafts.
Personal finance is something that basically everyone needs to know, and as things stand, basically they only get from their parents and that's gonna depend on what their parents know.
In the US, curriculum is determined at state or below. It looks like California revised its curriculum to include a high school personal finance class as of 2024, and students will start taking it as of 2027.
https://www.cde.ca.gov/ci/cr/cf/personalfinance.asp
Assembly Bill (AB) 2927, Chapter 37, Statutes of 2024 added a stand-alone course in personal finance to the high school graduation requirements, commencing with the graduating class of 2030–31. It requires public schools, including charter schools, to offer the course during the 2027–28 school year. The measure also calls for the State Board of Education (SBE) to approve a curriculum guide, outlining topics and providing resources for the course.
I think that that's probably a good move.
It's almost like there are those who benefit from large numbers of people being poor and in a constant state of financial crisis, and those people have some sway over public curriculum.
I agree. Everything I've learned about personal finances has come from podcasts - not school. I started when I was around 27, and I'm now by far the wealthiest in my friend group despite all of them being higher educated than me.
As thankful as I am for having learned this stuff later rather than never, I'd be so much better off if I'd known it when I was 18. When it comes to investing, missing a decade is a massive nerf. I'd be on my way to being a millionaire by the time I retire.
We need critical thinking courses as well
I don't see a reason not to teach more about personal finance. How interest works. Consequences for missing payments. I knew a guy that when he was 18 just maxed out several credit cards to buy fun stuff. He got out of that hole eventually, but it was a rough couple years.
I think there's an underlying problem that I don't know if you can just teach people, but I think people need to be better at delayed gratification and thinking about consequences. Like that old friend of mine, even if he knew that the credit card debt was going to be more expensive long term, he wanted the tv and stereo now. I don't know if you can teach that.
And, even if you could, it's fucked up that people who are poor through little fault of their own are told to just live with less, while people born into wealth can squander it.
So, at the end of this tangent, we should have mechanisms so the floor is high enough people can still have a decent life, and the ceiling is low enough that no one has four mansions.
It's by design. The financially illiterate produce more profit.
Don't worry everyone! Tariff rebates are a' comin'!
Oh but lol they're not for you. They're for the ones that passed on the fees to you. And they're being paid by you. Double dipping motherfuckers are keeping nearly half the population in p2p lives and it's disgusting!!!
To the tune of $166 billion AND you won't see prices drop. Wealth transfer by this administration is a feature not a bug.
I never imagined I would be in this boat — now I hold an oar and a spool of duct tape for any emerging holes.
We need a bail out. But that will never happen.
It won't happen to us. It'll happen to the shillionaire corpo dickbags, though!
No, you need riots.
But that will never happen.
That's apparently how Americans want it! They think they are free because the rich pay less tax, and minimum wage is unlivable, and they don't have free healthcare and education.
I've been saying before that I think EU should tax American goods for social dumping, which IMO is unfair competition against countries that don't do that.
Are we great yet?
I always have a hard time interpreting these types of article because they make the headline sound outlandish then don't go into all the details of the data/survey method. I've heard anecdotally that sometimes these surveys will have a narrow scope, like "can't cover a $1k expense" is only considering money in checking accounts because it would take some time to transfer money from savings or other accounts so these funds are not counted. Or they will report living paycheck to paycheck because they have no money left over after expenses but the expenses include X% contribution to retirement accounts. This article says "29 percent of consumers entered 2025 barely surviving on their paychecks" so they are currently using up all of their pay on expenses and not contributing to savings but how many of those same people have savings built up from prior years that they could draw on?
Just based on personal experience I could believe that a large number of Americans really are living paycheck to paycheck and would have trouble covering a major expense. But if this is true I would also think it should manifest in the economy as something like loan defaults, bank failures, mortgage foreclosures, huge drops in revenue for companies selling consumer goods, etc. and I haven't seen it. Are these respondents wrong and they actually can cover a $1k emergency expense? Are they just never encountering a $1k emergency expense? Such a huge number of people living in such a precarious state and the overall economy continues to function more or less normally?
It happens, just not commonly. A lot of people just ride the debt, making minimum payments, pay one credit card with another, sell their house or car, or both, and move in with relatives or just plain become homeless.
We just don't have the crisis.
I could. At least at the moment. Because I just got my tax refund. Ask me again in a month and my answer will likely be different.